Pro Football Reference Blog

I'm not a Buffalo fan and not even really a Giants hater (Belichick is a different story), but the result of this game ticks me off as much as any in NFL history. The line between champion and loser was never so thin than in this one. It came down to a 47 yard FG to decide the game. We've seen in his HC career, that Belichick's kicker (Vinatieri) made several of these kicks to save games, and they were usually more difficult than this one due to the weather. But this time the kicker misses, and we put this sham of a gameplan in the HOF.

Buffalo may have struggled on 3rd down (a drop or two by Reed, who disappeared after a big 1st quarter definitely helped), but they found little resistance all night when they actually had the ball.

- Kelly faced little pressure and was only sacked once in the game
- Buffalo had no turnovers in the game
- Their best player, Thurman Thomas, ran for 135 yards against that defense
- They averaged 37 yards/drive
- Down 5 in the 4th quarter, Buffalo goes down the field for a go ahead TD
- On the final drive of the game, Buffalo goes down the field to set up a 47 yd GW FG, but Norwood misses

Does that sound like the efforts of a HOF defensive gameplan?

The best defense for NY that night was the ball-control offense that ran it well, had no turnovers themselves (though they did have a sack causing a safety), and it also included one of the best 3rd down conversions you'll ever see (Ingram play).

Norwood makes the FG, and that Giants' defense becomes the #1 goat for the loss.

"You're the #1 defense, not even on the field for 20 minutes, and you still give up 20 points, 370 yards, no takeaways, let Thomas run wild, and let them drive down the field for 10 points in the 4th quarter, including a GW FG in the final seconds?"

Give me what the Giants did to the 2007 Patriots in the SB as a HOF-worthy gameplan any day over this 1990 fraud. I still can't believe how they found a way to get after Brady, who's protection up to that game was the best I've ever seen.

Greg Cosell once discussed this concept of shortening the game and keep away in one of his podcasts. The topic surrounded the colts this year and what strategy the chiefs should employ. His words(paraphrased) essentially said that all of this is bs. Ignoring the random screwyness of turnovers, every team will essentially get the ball and then in most cases, tight contests simply boil down to touchdowns versus field goals. His pt was, colts have had many many games where opponents run 10 play drives, eat up clock and then kick a field goal, only to see the colts offense operate with much greater red zone efficiency.

I'm glad chase wrote this article as it points out yet another avenue the media uses as part of their narrative for why team A won over team B. Remember, acknowledging the vast complexities of the game is mumbo jumbo, better to ere with the usual psychological team A wants it more over team B, or in this case, (when no one offense player had a monster game), defer to coaching greatness and that brilliant strategy no one else saw coming.

There's also the regular season comparison. The 07 Patriots hung 38 points on the Giants with little trouble in the week 17 game. The SB was much different.

The Giants and Bills played in December 1990 as well, and Buffalo won 17-13 in a game with no turnovers, so them playing a similar 20-19 game in the SB isn't much of a stretch. However it seems like there may have been some resting of starters (at least the QBs) going on in that game as both teams saw the backup QB play a significant amount. Or maybe that's when Phil Simms had his season-ending injury. Still, without looking, not sure why Reich had to play and throw 15 passes.

I'll say that the 9 of 16 3rd down conversions was the cause. If your team consistently converts 3rd downs, you have longer drives--which generally result in more points (punts turn into FG's, FG's into TD's). It's not so much the TOP--it's the long drives that turn into points. I would say the problem for the Bills was THEIR defense--it didn't allow the Bills more chances.

In fact, Chase, I don't know if you or someone else can research this, but: how often does a team that is on the low end of such a huge difference in 3rd down conversions (56% to 14%) win the game? (Maybe discarding a game where team A is something like 1 of 3 because they constantly turned 2nd downs into 1st downs) [Maybe total # of conversions would be better than %, although success on 3rd down breeds more opportunities.]
I'd wager the answer to my question is <20%

"Shortening the game" is so overrated as a strategy that I think it's actually now a little underrated -- or at least, misunderstood.

I think the point of shortening the game by controlling the clock has to do with if you're playing a team you think is significantly better than you. If that's true, then it's in your interest to limit the total number of possessions, on the theory that, in the longer run, the better team will prevail, but in the shorter run, the worse team has a chance to take advantage of a small sample of play. It's like an NBA playoff series; the Wizards could beat Miami in one fluky game, but it's seriously unlikely that they would beat them in 4 out of 7.

I disagree with Scott's first post in this thread, highlighting the Bills' accomplishments in the game, though he makes a very strong case. I would highlight the fact that it was the Giants' gameplan to limit Kelly's down-the-field passing. Which means that the Giants played a lot of "small-ball," putting at times 7 DBs even on 2nd and less-than-10, and conceding a lot of running yards to Thomas, and not blitzing a lot.

This is a good strategy for limiting down the field success, frustrating a big-play passing attack, and lowering 3rd-down success rates. It also concedes a lot of running yards and makes it difficult to get sacks. But that's exactly what happened, and it was by design. It doesn't mean the Bills played particularly well on offense, though.

What the Bills should have done is run Thomas a lot more, until they could move the Giants out of their small-ball lineup. Instead, they played into Parcells' hands on too many plays, throwing against a DB-heavy lineup.

I play college football and we pulled off an upset last season against a team that was better than us just by switching our looks and some stuff on offense. We didn't have a ball control offense but we ran option plays which we never did and we blitzed more on defense. To beat a better team you need creativity and heart.

"And for one of the few times in Super Bowl annals, the more talented team walked out a loser."

In theory, it's team #1 playing team #2, so the less talented team should win nearly half the time, no? Not that it's the only thing thing wrong with that excerpt...

Anyway, good article.

Also, Pm, that onside kick definitely falls under "Special Teams Heroics".

The Giants success on third down was more amazing than the Bills' failure. Giants made 6 thid downs in a row, and 8 of 9 at one point.

I agree the Bills should have adjusted, and run more than they did. Twice in the first half they went three and out with three passing plays.

Another issue is poor clock management by Buffalo at the end of the game. One of the other things about that final Buffalo drive that stuck out to me is the fact that, for whatever reason, the Bills seemed to be avoiding the sidelines like the plague. They stayed in bounds for the most part instead of getting out to stop the clock (only had 1, maybe 2 timeouts as it was), thus the clock wasting away as Jim Kelly tried to get another play off.

The term "better" team is entirely subjective since just about anyone can cherry pick stats to make one side or the other more favorable. However, the worst thing you can do is go by just one game to determine the better team. After all, the jets were clearly worse than the pats this year after that huge shellacking during the regular season. Fastforward to the playoffs and the jets practically dominated the pats(if you ignore that meaningless td at the end). The pt is, individual games are hardly the best determinant of who the better team is. As far as this game, it certainly screams to be more of an aberration for the bills than a typical performance. Anytime a good offense performs so poorly on third down, its usually fair to assume that part of the cause was just bad luck or having a bad day.

I don't think I was cherry picking stats on the game. Time of possession is a pretty big stat, so are third down conversions. And the Giants played that Bills team in the regular season. The Bills beat the Giants 17-13. So I hardly think the Giants defense containing the Bills offense was an aberration. Plus the Giants played in a better division, a better conference than Buffalo, and had the same record. All I was stating is the narrative of this Super Bowl is that Bills were by far the better team and NY should have lost. I am stating that I really don't believe in that.

The Bills defense might have been rated low, but it was certainly not a bad defense. The game plan was to score often and fast and play in a "bend but don't break" manner on defense. Who cares if the other team marches 60 yards for a field goal or no points? The Bills offense was not conducive to time of possession. Other teams had to play "keep away". What difference does it make how many yards the Bills gave up? They might have been ranked low, but they were not among the "worse defenses" in anybody's estimation.

The biggest problem with "shortening the game" strategies is that teams typically try to do it by increasing their run/pass ratio, which in turn reduces the effectiveness of their own offense. Perhaps you can reduce your opponent's number of possessions by two or three per game, but if by doing so your own offense is operating at only, say, 90% efficiency, you've only got that much more ground to make up. Alternatively, simply letting the play clock run down a few extra seconds per play without changing playcalling strategies really doesn't add up to much more than about one fewer possession over the course of a game. Again, that's not enough to make up the difference in strength between mismatched teams.

I examined such strategies empirically in separate essays in the 2005 and 2006 editions of PFP. Although in theory, it seems like a clever approach for the underdog to utilize, in practice I found little evidence that it is effective.

I am so tired of hearing people state that this game was won on a missed field goal. The points Buffalo did not score on that kick are not more valuable than the points the Giants did score on other plays. The name of the game is score points: you do or you don't. In this case, Buffalo didn't.

Specific to the field goal play: this was the longest attempt of Norwood's career on a grass field. The Giants defense was responsible for stopping Buffalo at that yard line. Since I hardly think anyone would be pointing at the kicker if the missed attempt had been an 80-yarder, it begs the question: at what point does this missed kick stop being the kicker's fault and start being the offense's fault? Or better yet, the defense's credit? Buffalo came up with 19 points that day, period. You can't blame Norwood when the Bills punted away six posessions and then asked him to hit a career long in the most difficult conditions to get them what they needed.